The Royal Opera has, of late, ­developed a passion for unearthing substandard works by Russian composers. First there was Cherevichki, Tchaikovsky's ­anodyne fairytale. Now we have The ­Gambler, Prokofiev's 1929 adaptation of ­Dostoevsky disturbing 1866 novel. It's one of Prokofiev's weakest scores, and you end up wondering why the ­company decided to put it on.

Dostoevsky's novel deals with one Alexey Ivanovich, tutor to the ­family of a Russian general. The latter is ­frittering away borrowed money in ­expectation of an inheritance from his aunt ­Babulenka. When ­Babulenka blows the family fortune at roulette, the general has a breakdown. This doesn't deter Alexey from developing his own gambling addiction as he attempts to rescue the general's ward Paulina, with whom he is ­besotted, from sexual blackmail by the Marquis, to whom she is in debt.

In setting his own libretto, Prokofiev aimed to replicate the patterns of human speech after the fashion of ­Mussorgsky and Debussy. But where they found melodic contours in speech by slowing it down, Prokofiev takes things at normal speaking pace. The result replicates the novel's hurtling momentum, but leaves Prokofiev no time to deal with its psychological depth. Dostoevsky, himself a gambler, presents Alexey as capable of acute analysis of his compulsive behaviour, yet unable to prevent it. Offering us no such insight, the score all too frequently gives the impression of a lot of people gabbling at each other over a series of flashy orchestral vignettes.

That it holds one's attention in this instance is due largely to some wonderful singing and a superlative production by Richard Jones. Updating it to the 1920s, he peoples it with a credible set of decaying aristocrats and impudent bourgeoisie. Jones sets the first act in a zoo, and a gradual proliferation of animal imagery in Anthony McDonald's sets soon coalesces into a scary portrait of how addiction has the potential to bring out the beast in a man.

Roberto Saccà's scruffily ­handsome, nihilistic Alexey tracks Angela Denoke's unsteady Paulina through this ­grotesque world before their erotic showdown in a grubby hotel. Fine ­artists both, their voices blaze with neurotic conviction. John Tomlinson and Susan Bickley are deeply affecting as the General and Babulenka, while Kurt Streit is the ­dangerous, seductive Marquis. In the pit, meanwhile, there's bravura playing from the ROH orchestra under Antonio Pappano. It's hard to imagine the work better done, but it's no masterpiece.

• This article was corrected on 16 February 2010. The Tchaikovsky fairytale referred to in the first paragraph was originally given the name Tsarevich; this has been amended to Cherevichki, which the Royal Opera performed under the title The Tsarina's Slippers last year.